Cisco Nexus 7000 Series

Targeted to the data center core, the Cisco Nexus 7000 series is the flagship offering in the vendor's new Cisco Nexus product family; a 10-slot modular switch that can initially be loaded with the user's choice of Gig (48 port) or 10 Gig (32 port) Ethernet ports, for a total of 384/256 ports per chassis respectively across 8 interface cards. The remaining 2 slots are dedicated to supervisor control modules, which themselves boast dual-core processors and provide the control plane and management functions for the chassis.

Total system bandwidth at the product release is expected to be 8 Tb/sec; with a design that will support 40 and 100 Gb/sec Ethernet in the future and a total system bandwidth of better than 15 Tb/sec.

The chassis is driven by the vendor's Cisco NX-OS operating system, which the vendor notes is based on Cisco IOS, MDS 9000 SAN-OS, and technology from other acquisitions. Key features of the OS include:

- Support for the definition and deployment of Virtual Device Contexts (VDCs), which enable the Nexus 7000 to be logically (virtually) partitioned into virtual devices that operate independently; i.e., each virtual device presents itself uniquely to connected users. Each VDC, while physically running within the Nexus 7000 chassis, can maintain its own set of software processes, have its own configuration, and be managed by its own administrator. Virtualized components in a VDC span the chassis' control, forwarding, and management planes; as well as allow for separately configured and partitioned software processes (for fault management) and assignment of hardware components.

- Support for self-diagnostics and "graceful" and stateful inline restarts of failed processes

- An XML-based programmatic interface

Also headlined is the device's support for the vendor's Trusted Security (TrustSec) architecture, which seeks to endow each port of the chassis with identity and role-based security features including 802.1x-based endpoint authentication/authorization, Link-layer AES-128 encryption, and enforcement of identity-based, application-specific access controls through ingress tagging and egress filters.

Management of the chassis is through the vendor's Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) GUI, the aforementioned XML-based API, or SNMP (v 1/2/3) support. Configurations can additionally be checkpointed for roll-back purposes and verified prior to roll-ins.

Other hardware features include up to five dedicated fabric modules that enable the processing of parallel fabric channels to each interface and supervisor slot (each of the five fabric modules can work simultaneously to deliver a total of up to 230 Gb/sec of bandwidth per slot); front-to-back airflow; modular, dual-input power supplies; and integrated cable management.

The Nexus 7000 Series is expected to begin shipping in 2Q/2008 with a starting price of $75,000.

Visit the Cisco Systems Web site for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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